


Expectancy

by mldrgrl



Category: The X-Files
Genre: F/M, Romantic Fluff
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2019-08-08
Updated: 2019-08-08
Packaged: 2020-08-12 01:57:49
Rating: General Audiences
Warnings: Creator Chose Not To Use Archive Warnings
Chapters: 1
Words: 1,869
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/20163799
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/mldrgrl/pseuds/mldrgrl
Summary: A pre-ep for Requiem





	Expectancy

She passes the time by watching the moon inch through the gaps in the tree branches outside Mulder’s bedroom window. The sex has been happening for weeks. Sleeping together, in the literal sense, is somewhat new for them. 

She’d like to claim it’s the adjustment period keeping her awake, but that’s not it. It’s something she can’t put her finger on. Quietly and cautiously, she slips out of his bed and heads to the couch. She can’t see the moon anymore from her new vantage point, just the sticky remains of a masking-taped ‘X’ on the window.

It isn’t cold in Mulder’s apartment, but it’s colder than she’s accustomed to, especially leaving the warmth of his bed. She pulls her feet up to the edge of the couch and pulls the t-shirt she’s wearing (the one she stole from his drawer and has no intention of returning) over her knees. As if she could quiet the thoughts cluttering her brain, she presses a hand to her head and rubs circles above her brows.

“Everything alright?”

She startles at the sound of Mulder’s sleep-husky voice and looks up towards the doorway to his bedroom. He shuffles towards her in boxer shorts hanging loosely from his hips. The blue glow of the fish tank gives his chest a soft grey-blue-silver sheen.

“I didn’t mean to wake you,” she says.

“You should always wake me.” He bats a pillow off the empty side of the couch and plops down heavily beside her. “But, you didn’t answer my question.”

“I’m fine.”

He slumps towards her and presses his face into the back of her shoulder. For a few moments it’s silent, save for the low burbling of the fish tank. She turns her head and drops her chin to her shoulder. He turns his eyes up to her.

“What are we doing, Mulder?”

“You and me? We’re sitting on the couch in the middle of the night.” He pauses and purses his lips a little. “How do you mean?”

“I mean…” She shakes her head a little and then brings her chin to her knees. “I don’t know what I mean. I was just thinking that...I was wondering where we might be headed.”

“I don’t know the answer to that, but turn on an after-hours cable channel and we can probably get The Stupendous Yappi’s 800 number and ask. For a dollar ninety-nine or so a minute.”

She smiles softly and tips her head to the side to bring her cheek to rest on her knee so she can look at Mulder. He looks more pensive than his casual joking lets on. She runs her fingers through his hair from forehead to nape and he closes his eyes.

“Do you want to chase monsters in the dark forever?” she asks. “Does that make you happy?”

His brows pinch together creating a line between the folds of skin above his nose. He opens his eyes and shifts his head back towards the cushions, away from her shoulder. Her fingertips glance off his jaw.

“I don’t know that it’s ever made me happy,” he finally says. I don’t know if ‘happy’ is really the right word to use.”

“Then what is?”

“Well…” He rolls his gaze to the ceiling and his adam’s apple bobs up and down as he swallows. “I know that having you by my side in all of this brings me happiness.”

“All of what?”

“Life. Work. Whatever.” He turns towards her again, suddenly and quickly, and captures her eyes with his. “It’s not the same for you.”

“There isn’t anywhere else I’d rather be.”

His head tips quizzically and she knows she’s confusing him, but she’s confusing herself. She sighs a little and unfolds her legs from under her shirt. When she nudges him over, he takes the hint and lays back with his head resting on the arm of the couch. She slides into the pocket of space between his body and the back cushions, resting her head on his chest and draping an arm over his ribs and a leg across his thighs. His arm comes down along her back, along her arm, cupping her elbow.

“When I was younger,” she says. “We moved around so often, sometimes two or three times in the same year. I used to tell myself when I got older, I would find a place and stay forever.”

“You want to move?”

“No, I don’t want to move. I just have this…” She lifts her arm a little and shakes her hand with curved fingers, like she’s trying to catch hold of something she can’t see. “This restlessness lately. The way I used to feel when we started to pack our things again.”

She can feel him thinking under her, turning over what she’s said in his mind. It’s in the way his chest rises and falls a little too quickly, not the deep and slow way she’s gotten to know in the past few months. It’s in the thrum of his heartbeat beneath her hand and the soft puffs of air from his nose.

Very slowly, his fingers slide up her arm and he gently lifts her hair from her neck. He rubs the spot behind her ear and then moves down to the back of her head. He touches her like he’s searching for something and she doesn’t know what that is until he finds it. His fingers light on the puckered strip of scar tissue at the base of her neck and his index finger whispers around it. She reaches up and covers his hand, stilling it against the back of her neck. 

“It’s not that,” she says.

“How do you know?”

“That was different. That was being in one place and suddenly being in another without knowing how I got from A to B.”

“Didn’t you have a feeling? Like you were being called?”

“Not like this. Not something I could dwell on or that kept me up at night. I was just laying there feeling like I wasn’t comfortable in my own skin.”

He gives her neck a light squeeze and she carries his hand back down so his arm is around her again. His chest expands fully with a deep sigh.

“It’s probably just...hormones,” she says.

“Hormones?”

“Even if it’s rather unpredictable, the symptoms crop up. The one thing They couldn’t steal is the body’s ability to go through the motions, I guess.”

“What kind of symptoms?”

She can’t quite believe she’s lying on Mulder’s chest about to give him a rundown of her PMS complaints, but she is. “Headaches, nausea, backache, tender breasts, dizziness, exhaustion.”

“You feel all of that? Right now?”

“Not right now, no. Various combinations at times. It’s standard.”

“I’ve never noticed.”

She huffs a little at that. “That’s what women do, Mulder. They make sure you don’t notice.”

“You go through all of that without anyone noticing?”

“Pretty much.”

“And here I was complaining about a paper cut yesterday.”

She smiles and pulls his hand up to her mouth to kiss the spot on his thumb he’d sliced open on a file. He’d made quite a racket, jumping up and down and shaking his wounded hand, swearing under his breath. She’d rolled her eyes and rapped his knuckles disapprovingly when he tried to put his thumb in his mouth. One alcohol swab and small Band-Aid later, he was as good as new. 

“What about racing thoughts?” he asks.

“Sometimes.”

“So, hormones. Not the chip and not...a subconscious fear of change?”

“I don’t fear change.”

He thumb wrestles with her for a few moments to free his hand and then lightly taps her chin. “But then, it wouldn’t be subconscious,” he says. 

She mulls that over a bit and then tilts her head up with her chin still on his chest. His eyes are masked by the stripes of streetlight and shadow from the wooden slats over the window. By the downward tilt of his head though, she can tell he’s looking at her.

“I’m still trying to work out this new version of us,” she admits. “But, I like it.”

“What do you like about it?”

“It’s easy.”

“Yeah.”

“You make it easy.”

“Oh?” He grins at her. “You expected something else?”

“I kind of did.”

“Fair enough.” They both chuckle and he shrugs. She lays her cheek down against him again. “I can chalk it up to coincidence then, that this sudden restlessness of yours just happens to pop up when we start sleeping together?”

“You have nothing to worry about.”

“Okay.”

She rubs her face into his chest and closes her eyes, sleepy now and feeling a bit more like herself. He shifts beneath her and then settles a little deeper into the couch. He strokes her hair and rubs the ends between his fingers.

“Does chasing monsters in the dark make you happy, Scully?”

“When I’m chasing monsters in the dark with you,” she murmurs.

He grunts a little. “I wasn’t searching for happiness in the x-files, you know,” he says.

“I know.”

“I think I found it anyway. Or, rather, it came walking through my door and shook my hand. I just didn’t know it at the time.”

He says things sometimes that warms her from top to bottom. She acknowledges the compliment with a hum and clenches her leg and arm a little tighter over him.

“Are we sleeping out here?” he asks.

“No, I guess we should get up.” She sighs. 

“I could carry you.”

“Getting up.” She pushes herself up from his chest and hovers over him for a moment. He slides his fingers into her hair and she leans down to rub her nose back and forth with his before she pushes away again.

Ostensibly to help her up, Mulder grips her backside as she moves over and across him off the couch. Even in the dark, she can see him smirking when he rolls himself off to stand behind her.

“Big day tomorrow,” she says, leading the way back to his bedroom.

“What, the expense audit?”

“Yeah.”

“Pft. They’re just going to come in and say the same thing they say every year. Cut expenses! We’ll say okay, and see you in a year.”

They get back into bed, Mulder on the right, Scully on the left. She adjusts the covers and turns onto her side to face the window while he spoons up behind her.

“Skinner made it seem a little...ominous this time around,” she says.

“He’s all bark and no bite. You know that.”

“I don’t know, Mulder. Something feels different about this one.”

“So, we’ll offer to start sharing rooms out of town. In the name of budgetary cuts, of course.”

“Of course.”

As is his habit, he presses a long kiss to where the back of her shoulder meets her neck and she smiles.

“Can you sleep now?” he asks.

“I think so.”

“Wake me if you need me.”

“I will.”

He backs away from her, but not far. The moon has disappeared from the window, leaving only the orange glow of the streetlamp and the shadowed silhouette of a blossoming black gum tree.

The End


End file.
